


When We Meet (We Become)

by that_one_kid



Series: What If One More Shovel In The Dirt Was All It Took? [1]
Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: But they try, Gen, Kid!Fic, Well - Freeform, not really - Freeform, sort of a possible prequel to the actual show, sort of an AU fic where they met earlier, such good kids, they are all precious cinnamon buns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-03 02:38:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11522790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/that_one_kid/pseuds/that_one_kid
Summary: Dirk Gently goes to San Fransisco. We find out where Bart got her name. The Rowdy 3 think in poetry and speak rarely. Ken makes some friends. Farah and Amanda beat people up together. Oh, yeah, and they're all under 14 years old.





	1. Everything is Connected

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry not sorry. Kudos for the BART/Bart naming goes to Penny. You know who you are.

            “We’re in San Francisco!” Dirk said, beaming at Riggens. He turned back to the window and stared through it, pressing his nose up against it, leaving foggy marks on the glass. A nearby woman with a scowl and a moth stuck in her hair glared at the young soldier, charged with the care of the ten-year-old psychic, but he just smiled calmly back at her and rested an authoritative hand on Dirk’s shoulder.

            “Yes, we are,” he said, smiling down at him. “Do you like it?”

            “More than anything else in the _whole world_!” Dirk said, his voice rising to a squeak. Riggens smiled again, and braced Dirk as the train slid to a halt. He suspected that Dirk would have happily tumbled to the (alarmingly unhygienic) floor of the train car, but he was trying to keep the kid safe, after all, while testing his abilities in the closest big city. Dirk saw the crowds begin to move, and Riggens startled as the boy slipped his freezing hand into the soldier’s loosely curled fist. He let himself be tugged out into the station, where Dirk made it three steps before freezing, wide-eyed. He spun around in a slow circle, clutching tightly onto Riggens’ hand.

            “What’s BART?” he asked first, pointing at the sign on the side of the train they’d ridden in on.

            “Bay Area Rapid Transit. It’s the name of the group that makes the trains run.” Riggens answered, shifting to try to move the flow of traffic around the boy who’d stopped immediately in the flow of traffic.

            “Who’s that guy?” Dirk asked, pointing to a man in a grey suit. The man scowled back at him, and Riggens looked over. He had a goatee, sharp lines and freshly shaved, and a long scar over one eyebrow that made him look permanently angry.

            “I don’t know,” he answered, eventually. “Why?”

            “He’s not very nice,” Dirk answered with a shrug. “But a time-out would be better.” Riggens looked at him askance and took out a little notebook, jotting down a few notes about the man and then carefully copying down Dirk’s statement word for word. He stopped writing when Dirk started tugging on his sleeve.

            “Who’s she?” Dirk asked, pointing at a girl with matted hair and dirty jeans, who was asleep under one of the bus benches. She was a little younger than Dirk, and she didn’t seem to have an adult anywhere around. “Who’s she?” Dirk asked again, louder, and Riggens shushed him.

            “Let’s talk about that when we get to our hotel, okay?” he stalled. Discussing the concept of homeless children with such a naïve child didn’t rank highly on his list of things he wanted to do today.

            “Okay!” Dirk agreed easily, and they walked out of the station into the first big city Dirk Gently had ever seen.

~ ~ ~

            She watched them go from under the bench, her eyes cracked open just a little bit. When they were gone, she squirmed out from underneath. No one had ever asked what Bart meant before. She hadn’t known her name stood for something, just that people always said it around her. The only name she’d found not already tied to a person. She sat on the top of the bench she’d just been sleeping under, tugging her jeans down to cover her dirt-caked shins and adjusting the baggy t-shirt she wore, advertising something about a coding competition. They’d been giving them away for free a few weeks earlier, so she had a nice clean shirt on now. The man with the funny beard and scar was standing by the tracks now, waiting for his train. He was a bad man, Bart knew. She saw a moth flit by and smiled. She ran after it, barefoot feet slapping against the concrete floor and she jumped, cupping her hands around the moth, tumbling with a burst of laughter into the man with the goatee. He stumbled forwards, losing his grip on his heavy-looking briefcase. It flew onto the tracks, and the chain around his wrist and around the case yanked taut, pulling him the last step forwards and sending him pinwheeling after it. At that moment, the train swept into the station with a final-sounding crunch. A splatter of blood landed on Bart’s face and new shirt, and then a moment later the screaming started. She smiled, and walked away into the confusion.

~ ~ ~

            “Hey, you!” someone shouted across the schoolyard. “The stuck-up finally decided to come out and play!” Ken looked around warily. The voice was coming from a boy that was way too massive to be in his grade. The same boy who was rapidly swaggering towards him. “I hear you’re pretty good with a computer, right? Well, why don’t you make my report cards all good, then, huh?”

            “I, uh, I don’t think that’s-“ Ken started, nervously, and the boy hit Ken’s chest with a open palm. He stumbled backwards, falling onto the ground with his hands outstretched. He felt a sharp pain, and looked down at his palms. They were scraped, pebbles and woodchips embedded in his hands. He felt tears well in his eyes.

            “Hey, asshat,” a girl’s voice said, and the boy standing over Ken spun around, and, apparently, kept spinning. Ken was vaguely aware that she’d landed a punch at some point in there.

            “No, uh,” he managed. “There’s a lot of them.” The girl crouched down next to him and offered her hand.

“Hi. I’m Amanda.” He held up his own, bloody hand to show her, and she instead took him by the wrist and tugged him to his feet. The patter of running feet registered in Ken’s head a moment before the ring of larger boys that surrounded him and Amanda. She curled her hands into fists, and Ken noticed with alarm that she was smiling.

“You’re crazy!” he said, his voice squeaking a little more than he’d otherwise hope. Then the boys lunged and he curled up defensively. No punches actually landed on him, though there was a lot of sounds of fighting, and he finally opened his eyes to find Amanda and a new girl standing over him, with the boys running away or (in several cases) hobbling away and groaning.  The new girl had really cool hair and a sort of nervous, twitchy feel that Ken could relate to.

“You are _so cool_.” Amanda said to her, offering her hand. “I’m Amanda.”

“Farah,” the new girl responded. “Nice to meet you.” A whistle blew, and a teacher came running over to them.

“Oh, now they notice.” Amanda said with a scowl. “Who’s up for a trip to the principal’s office?”  
~ ~ ~

They found each other at late nights and early mornings, when the biting cold settled under their skin, under bridges and on park benches, in libraries and fast-food bathrooms. They found each other and they stuck, all loud and dancing and brave and stupid and spray paint and _family_. They found each other, and they became one not other. One self. The Rowdy Three. The Rowdy Three caught a scent, and they laughed and shook and rattled their crowbars and took off across the city gleaming with delicious darkness.


	2. Nothing is Also Connected

            “Last night, we covered an ongoing investigation into a series of accidental deaths on the Bay Area Rapid Transit system…” The television droned on in the background, and Dirk bounced a few, experimental times on the bed. He really did enjoy his trips with Uncle Riggins out into the city, even when he asked him questions he couldn’t answer or had him try to guess weird things like what someone was thinking about. Uncle Riggins walked out of the bathroom and gasped. He took out his little notebook and started writing, while looking at the TV. Dirk looked back at the TV too. The man with the goatee from the train station was on the screen.

            “The latest casualty in what authorities are now calling a likely connected series of deaths,” the television anchor was saying, “They have released a statement to the press saying that there is a possibility that these deaths were not accidental, as previously assumed. More information as this case develops.”

            “Well,” Uncle Riggins said, and Dirk bounced twice more on the bed because he was excited. Uncle wrote in his little notebook a lot, but whenever he gasped like that and wrote something down they’d go and get ice cream to celebrate.

            “Ice creeeeeeam?” he asked, plaintively. Uncle Riggins smiled and ruffled his hair affectionately.

            “Ice cream,” he agreed. Uncle Riggins threw on his coat, and then fixed Dirk’s shoes, which he’d shoved onto the wrong feet in his excitement. As they walked out into the streets, the night air cool and smelling of salt and city, the clouds thickened and darkened above them.   
            “What was the TV talking about?” Dirk asked, suddenly.

            “Why?” Uncle Riggins asked (like he always did) and Dirk shrugged.

            “It’s important,” Dirk answered, hesitantly. “Like, really important. And I think it has to do with us.” Uncle Riggins, for a minute, looked worried, but then he smiled again.

            “They were talking about how people kept getting killed on the trains here. In train stations, on trains, on or near trollies. The only connection they can find is the public transit system.”

            “Everything is connected,” Dirk responded, offhand. “I’m trying to figure out why BART makes me think of that weird girl under that bench in the train station.” He looked around to try to distract himself when he saw her – hanging by one arm from the rail of a trolley rolling past them. She waved. “Weird girl from the train station!” he yelped, pointing. Uncle Riggins spun around at his cry and saw the girl too, just as the trolley rolled out of sight into the night.

            They caught the next trolley, ice cream forgotten, and Dirk excitedly bounced his way up to the first person he saw.

            “Who’s that girl?” he asked the man in a business suit.  “The one in the torn jeans who rides the trolley on the outside?”

            “She’s a demon.” The man responded, his voice tight and angry. “The demon of BART. She rides around, and no one says anything, and she never pays. And everywhere she rides, death follows.” He turned and spit over the railing and into the street, then took another large gulp from a flask.

            “Um, thanks for your information,” Dirk said, backing up. “I think I’ll go interview some other witnesses now.” He talked to the conductor when they stopped to load more people on. He fought back giggles every time the conductor answered in his thick Scottish brogue.

            “Ach, aye, that wee lass. We call her Jane, like Jane Doe. She doesn’t have any money, doesn’t have any family. She seems well fed and healthy, though. Kinda skittish, like. Won’t let me near her.”

            “That man in the suit said she’s a demon.” Dirk reported, feeling very relieved by the reasonableness of the bearded engineer.

            “I reckon she is, too. But not a bad kind. Only folks who ever die around her are the rotten kind, you see. An’ we leave her meals, sometimes, and they vanish, but she never gets too close to any of us. That kind of life might do somethin’ to ya, we feel.”

            Dirk returned to Uncle Riggins and relayed the results of his investigation, feeling very grown up. Uncle Riggins told him that a lot of superstitions were based in reality, and they agreed to try to talk to the girl if they saw her again. Then they headed to get ice cream.

~ ~ ~

            “Your dad is _so cool_ ,” Amanda said to Farah for the eighth time. Amanda, Farah, and Ken had gotten out of trouble because the principal had called Farah’s dad first, and he’d shown up within minutes, wearing a Kevlar vest (which she knew he normally wore under a coat) and looking very angry. He demanded to know why the teachers had let eight boys corner his daughter and her two friends (friend was maybe a strong word, Farah felt, but Amanda hadn’t protested and Ken just looked flattered and scared). The principal (a nasty man who liked to be mean to kids who were different) looked like a dog that had cornered three puppies and abruptly discovered that one of the puppies was a wolf pup. (Scared, that is) Then, because they’d gotten off without any trouble and were excused from school for the day, but Ken’s parents were at work, Farah’s dad had taken them all home to clean and put bandages on Ken’s hands, and to congratulate his daughter and her friend (Farah kind of liked the way that sounded) for standing up to bullies to protect someone. Since it was Friday, and Farah had (haltingly, unsurely, but enthusiastically) invited them, Ken and Amanda had called their parents and asked if they could spend the night at a friend’s house.

            “Thank you.” Farah said to Amanda, smiling. (She’d said thank you every time Amanda had complimented her dad, and she would keep saying thank you for as long as it took because she really wanted this girl to like her). “You’re pretty awesome too. I mean pretty. Do I mean that? I’m not sure.” (Really really wanted her to like her). Ken was staring, wide-eyed, out the window, and her dad was glancing around the trolley car (spot checks).

            “What are you looking at?” she asked Ken, and looked out the window beside him. Outside, a man was holding a gun pointed at a girl, a few years younger than her. As she watched, he pulled the trigger three times (shot! Shot her!) and Farah and Ken both shouted and flinched away. Farah steeled herself and looked back out the window, where the apparently unharmed girl was standing looking mildly amused, and holding the gun (what that doesn’t make sense how did she how). She fired once, and the man slumped backwards, flipping off of the car over the railing and hitting the street behind them. Ken threw up. Farah’s dad was already by her side, and he moved quickly, running to the doorway and throwing open the door. The girl looked up at him, gun held slightly to one side. Farah frowned. People who held guns like that did it because they didn’t know how to use a gun. But this girl clearly knew how to use a gun. (She was worried about her dad) Her dad was outside, gesturing at the girl to put the gun down. She lifted the gun, pointed it at him, and Farah’s world froze. The girl frowned, looked at the gun, looked back up, and dropped it. Her dad stepped forwards, carefully, carefully, and then took her by the shoulder and led her inside, away from the gun.

            “Did you see what happened?” he asked, and Ken blurted out “It was in self-defense, he was trying to shoot her, I saw it.” Amanda was watching everything with wide, sparkling eyes. She hadn’t seen what happened, Farah remembered. The new girl gave Ken an appraising look, and then stepped away from Farah’s father. He watched her, carefully, his hand on his taser. She walked over to Ken and put one hand on his shoulder. He stared back, wide-eyed and terrified. “Hi.” She said. Her voice sounded rusty, like she hadn’t used it in years, despite the fact that she could at most be nine years old. “I’m Bart. You’ll see me again.” Then she turned lightly and ran for the door. Farah’s dad lunged to grab her, but the trolley lurched suddenly and he fell to one side. She ran to the emergency exit, tossed it open, and leaped into the street. Ken and Farah and Amanda ran to the window just in time to see her land on her feet in the road, and a truck swerved to miss her, running into a small car instead. Bart looked at the crash, nodded, and walked off. The trolley finished slowing down and pulled into a station. There was a moment of silence, and then by unspoken agreement they all filed off and headed towards the ice cream shop.

~ ~ ~

            “Oh, excuse me.” Uncle Riggins said, holding the ice cream shop door open for the family that had just come up behind them. Dirk stared with open curiosity. They were important, too, he felt. Somehow they were tied to all of this, to the, the whatever, that was happening. The dad wasn’t tall, and wasn’t short. He was, however, the scariest and coolest person Dirk had ever seen. His skin was a dark brown the color of coffee with almost no milk, like Uncle Riggins used to make. One of the kids with him was almost just as scary, in her leather jacket and dark jeans. Dirk was jealous of her hair, which was the best. The other girl was wearing jeans with tears in them, but not torn on accident like the girl from the subway. She was also wearing a t-shirt of a band and wearing a bracelet with spikes on it. She glanced at him when they walked in, and then smiled. The boy with them looked scared, but he looked like the kind of person who was always kind of scared. He was trying to keep the two girls between Dirk and himself, but he was also writing something in a notebook really fast. It looked like blueprints from spy movies. They went up to the counter first and ordered, grabbing their ice cream and sitting down at a big table. Dirk and Uncle Riggins ordered ice cream next. Dirk took his ice cream cone and went and sat down at the table with the other kids while Uncle Riggins was paying.

            “Hi!” he said, brightly. “Cool schematics.” The boy looked up and gave him a shy smile. “Plus I love your bracelet. And your hair.” The band girl looked at him with a smile again, and the other girl looked at him suspiciously.

            “What do you want?” she asked.

            “Have you seen a girl in ripped jeans who rides the subway and the trolleys a lot?” Dirk asked. Everyone at the table went pale.

            “What do you know about her?” asked the dad, glancing up at where Uncle Riggins was paying.

            “Nothing. I know some people think she’s a good demon and some people think she’s a bad demon. That’s it.”

            “Be careful, kid,” said the girl in the leather jacket. “She’s dangerous.”

            “I’m older than you!” Dirk protested.

            “She’s right,” chimed in the father. “Stay away from her, okay? Let’s go, kids.” They all gathered up their ice cream and headed out. Uncle Riggins was behind him now, and gave him a look.

            “I think I found another clue.” Dirk said, smiling. 

~ ~ ~ 

Sometimes, the Rowdy Three head into the subway. They tag walls, smash signs, and cause a general ruckus. Sometimes, the Rowdy Three ride the trolleys. They use them to get to concerts, where the energy level is beyond delicious and the blue lights are put down to special effects. Sometimes, the Rowdy Three cross paths with the wild girl with matted hair and crazy eyes, and they back up and let her pass.

 

The Rowdy Three are driven to cause chaos, mischief. Sometimes it was “normal” like shouting and baseball bats and breaking glass. Sometimes it wasn’t, like the time they spilled marbles on the road by the trolley’s path or the time they released one hundred live moths into a subway entrance. If they’d thought about it, the weird ones were usually somewhere near the territory of the wild girl. They didn’t think about it.


	3. End of the Beginning

            “Go Ken!” yelled Amanda, and Farah shushed her with a poke and a baleful glare. “What?” Amanda protested.

            “You don’t… cheer… at coding competitions.” Farah said, haltingly. Amanda winked.

            “You don’t. I do. Go Ken!” Farah rolled her eyes but didn’t step away. The back door of the gym opened, and a girl walked in. This wouldn’t have kept Farah’s attention, except that said girl was wearing a coding competition t-shirt with an alarming splatter of blood on it, torn jeans, and very much resembled a girl that she’d seen kill a man in cold blood the night before. The door clicked shut behind her and Farah jumped. Amanda, alarmed, turned to her and put a comforting arm around her shoulders.

            “Hey, are you okay?” Farah just jerked her chin towards the door. Amanda looked up and laughed.

            “Huh. Small world, huh?”

            “How can you be so calm!” Farah protested. “She killed someone yesterday!”

            “A bad person.” Amanda responded with a shrug. “Plus, she came to watch Ken’s coding competition, so she must be good.” She looked up, waved at the girl, and went back to shouting.

            “Let’s go Ken! Finish the last bit of code! Deworm your code!”

            “It’s debug,” corrected Farah automatically, but she was smiling, and blushing, (and it was definitely not because of the arm around her). Then, from across the hall she heard a faint, raspy voice.

            “Go Ken!” And Farah lost it. She was laughing now, hard, tears running down her face, because she had friends, and they thought her family was cool, and weird acquaintances who killed people and cheered at coding competitions because Amanda did, and they were all SO WEIRD and maybe, just maybe, she was too.

~ ~ ~

Bart left before Ken finished. She was worried that just going was enough to put him on her list, but she still didn’t feel any urge to kill him. She shrugged. Things happened the way they happened, and she did what the universe wanted. Maybe the universe wanted her to have a friend. Someone who would talk to her.

~ ~ ~

            Dirk woke up in the middle of the night with a scream in the back of his throat. “Uncle Riggins wouldn’t do that,” he whispered to himself, looking over at the empty bed in the hotel room. “He said he was going to go run some errands. He wouldn’t hurt my friends.”

~ ~ ~

It was pretty easy to grab her, for someone who had apparently killed or at least caused the deaths of an estimated 40 criminals. He found her outside of a high school and told her that he’d come to take her away. She looked around for a minute, shrugged, and held out her hands. He cuffed her and walked her into the van.

            “Why didn’t you run?” he asked, thirty minutes into the ride back to base.

            “Universe takes me where I need to be,” the nine-year-old answered in an unsettling raspy voice and with unwavering confidence. “People will die when they need to.” Riggens made a personal vow then and there to never let her come into contact with Project Icarus on-base.

~ ~ ~

            The Rowdy Three don’t like cages. They growl and pace and are hungry, really hungry, they haven’t gone to a concert in weeks, and they rarely are given anyone interesting to feed on in this small, dark cage they live in. The door opens and closes, and they move closer, towards the best-smelling energy they’ve smelled in their time here. Not fear, not rage, not abandonment. Purpose. And then they recognize the wild girl and she recognizes them, and they hesitate, watch her, and she nods her permission.

            She’s always safe, they’re always hungry, and the universe sends them all where they need to go.

 

 


End file.
